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The Community and the Bartender






Two years ago, I started interviewing people in the theater world about the problems within that community.

All the subjects of the interviews remained anonymous to encourage people to speak directly and plainly without worrying that there would be consequences down the line.

(Of course, even then, some people felt like outing themselves and getting in hot water, but we're going to leave that water under another bridge.)

When I decided it was time to bring the series to a close, it was partly because I thought it had run its course, and partly because I had a new topic I wanted to tackle.

While I've had my issues with theater and the people who do it, I've never felt like I didn't belong there, whereas from the moment I came out, I've never truly felt like a part of the gay community.

To be clear, that probably has way more to do with me than the community, but it's something I wanted to explore, and I knew how I wanted to do it.

The theater interviews were always conducted with people who didn't live anywhere near me, and there was a reason for that. We like to think that if we can attach a problem to someone we know, we can fix the problem, and I've never found that to be the case. Problems within systems are not caused by any one person, but the system itself. That's the case in theater, and I believe it's the same for the LGBTQI+ community.

So I picked a city far from my own, and I started reaching out to gay men in that city. I spent a few months following as many of them as I could on social media, and then I began asking if I could interview them. The goal was to see if we could address some of the issues of the modern gay community and get to the heart of those issues while hopefully find some solutions.

Today, I'm talking with Aidan. He worked as a bartender at the best known bar in the Community. It's the same bar Scott was thrown out of, and Aidan reached out to me after reading that interview to tell me more about how that establishment is run.

Here's the interview:

ME:  Did you just come from the gym?

AIDAN:  Yeah, I got in a few minutes ago.

ME:  Do you want to shower and then come back?

AIDAN:  You don't like me sweaty, Kevin?

ME:  I just want you to be comfortable.

AIDAN:  I'm comfortable but I smell really rank right now.

ME:  Can I be honest? You look like you smell disgusting.

AIDAN:  (Laughs.)  I do. I thought maybe you'd like that?

ME:  I actually bleach everyone I fool around with before we start.

AIDAN:  That's a Dexter move.

ME:  Did you just compare me to a hot serial killer? Because that is the GREATEST compliment.

AIDAN:  You've got a little Bundy going on.

ME:  Stop, you don't mean that.

AIDAN:  Do I really look gross?

ME:  It doesn't matter. Nobody can see you, but me.

AIDAN:  Are you cool if I take my shirt off then? It's soaked.

ME:  This is a family blog, Aidan.

AIDAN:  I'm sorry, I'll leave it on.

ME:  No, it's okay. But we have to get started.

AIDAN:  I'm sorry. I'm very excited to do this.

ME:  Let's do the 1-2-3's.

AIDAN:  Okay.

ME:  When did you come out?

AIDAN:  I was twenty. College. I came out so I could date my professor.

ME:  Your professor?

AIDAN:  He was a great professor.

ME:  What was the class?

AIDAN:  Biology.

ME:  You're lying.

AIDAN:  I am not lying.

ME:  Is this a con?  Are you conning me?

AIDAN:  I'll give you his name when we're done. You can look him up.

ME:  And are you from the Community originally?

AIDAN:  No, I moved here from [Name of City] at the end of 2018.

ME:  So you haven't been around that long?

AIDAN:  No.

ME:  And were you a bartender prior to the move?

AIDAN:  I was a bartender all through college, and then when I left school, I realized that I had a passion for it. I got into learning about mixology. I wanted to open my own bar, but, you know, that costs a lot of money, and I was saving up to put a proposal together to open up my own place.

ME:  What's your work history been like?

AIDAN:  Gold stars--always.

ME:  And did--

AIDAN:  Is this when you tell me you have dirt on me?

ME:  Is there dirt on you?

AIDAN:  I have lots of dirt.

ME:  Okay then.

AIDAN:  Not with jobs though. At work, I'm a good boy.

ME:  How did you hear about The Bar?

AIDAN:  When I first moved here, I was staying with a friend, a girl, and I said to her--Where’s the gay bar in town? Just because I wanted to go out that first night. She said it's [The Bar] and that's where we went, and I liked the vibe of the place. I knew I was going to have to find a job, and that night, they were slammed. It looked like there was only one guy working the bar, and when we went home, I told my friend, I'm going to apply there. The next day, I do some research, just like you--

ME:  You do your detective work.

AIDAN:  I do, and there's a post on this Facebook Group that says 'They only hire straight bartenders there.' Then all these people are commenting saying that's true. So when I go in to apply, I was thinking, I'm not going to say whether I'm gay or straight. I'm not going to say anything, and they can't ask me. I do the interview--

ME:  Who was the interview with?

AIDAN:  The owner. Brian.

ME:  Okay.

AIDAN:  I have a great resume at this point. The bar I worked at before--He knew about it, because it's a popular bar in [Name of City] and I had been there for awhile, and I put the owner as a reference.

ME:  So you felt like this should be a slam dunk.

AIDAN:  Yeah, and I could tell something was off. He seemed like, distracted, or he was looking like he was trying to figure me out.

ME:  Do you think he was trying to tell if you were gay or not?

AIDAN:  Well, what happened was, we're done with the interview, and I know I am not getting this job. I can f***ing feel it, man--Sorry, can I swear?

ME:  Yeah.

AIDAN:  I know I'm not getting it. As we're getting up, and he's shaking my hand, I say--'Sorry I have to run, but I have to pick up my girlfriend from work.' The guy's whole attitude changed. He starts smiling, saying 'Oh, you have a girlfriend, huh? When can you start? When can you start?'

ME:  So now you have the job?

AIDAN:  Now, he's just offering me the job.

ME:  And he hadn't offered it to you--

AIDAN:  No, he had said before 'We'll call you' and now he's offering it to me.

ME:  Did you ever consider not working there if it meant you were going to have to lie about being gay?

AIDAN:  To tell you the truth, I'm a very competitive person. I have gotten every job I've ever gone out for. I've gotten every--Sorry, I was going to say something that was going to make me sound like a dick.

ME:  Say it.

AIDAN:  I was going to say I--I'll say I usually get every guy I want.

ME:  This is when I reveal the dirt I have on you.

AIDAN:  (Laughs.)  I'm just saying it to be like--I can't just let something go if I know that all I have to do to get it is, like, tell a little lie. And it's a job interview. Like, people lie on job interviews all the time.

ME:  But you weren't offended that you might have to do that?

AIDAN:  So, back home, we did have a rule at the place I worked at that you could not--it was kind of an unwritten rule, but, like, you couldn't sleep with customers.

ME:  Is that a common rule? I've never worked at a bar.

AIDAN:  Uh, I don't think so? But I know, part of why people thought our bar was so popular was because we were good about not mixing business with pleasure.

ME:  You think if bartenders are sleeping with the customers, it hurts the business?

AIDAN:  That was the opinion of the owner of my previous bar, and I thought that's what Brian's thinking was too.

ME:  Was this a gay bar you worked at before?

AIDAN:  Yes.

ME:  So you think, in Brian's case, the logic was--If you're straight, I don't even have to make a rule about you sleeping with the customers?

AIDAN:  Yes.

ME:  That kind of presumes that if you hire gay men, they have no self-control?

AIDAN:  No, I mean, hey, listen--at my last place, where I worked, and I first got hired and the guy who had been there for years before me pulled me aside and told me about the rule, I was like 'No problem. I have a boyfriend' Or I had one at the time 'You don't have to worry about me, dude.' The very first night, Anderson Cooper walks into the bar.

ME:  Did Anderson Cooper hit on you?

AIDAN:  Anderson Cooper wanted me to bail on my shift and go back to his hotel room with him.

ME:  And you didn't go?

AIDAN:  I did not go, BUT!  I didn't go because of my boyfriend. It was not because of the rule about the customers.

ME:  But that's a huge exception.

AIDAN:  It's an exception--By the way, I'm still mad I didn't go, because now me and my boyfriend aren't even together anymore.

ME:  No, it's nice that you--

AIDAN:  You're laughing right now.

ME:  Sorry, yeah, you're an idiot.

AIDAN:  (Laughs.)  I also don't like the whole silver fox rich boy thing. It doesn't do it for me, but he was very nice.

ME:  But you really think you going home with him would have hurt the bar?

AIDAN:  That story is only to say, like, you can't say you'd never be tempted unless you're just not going to be into the clientele at all. That's how my old boss looked at it.

ME:  Let's just break it down though.

AIDAN:  All right.

ME:  So you're gay.

AIDAN:  Yes.

ME:  But you lied and said you were straight?

AIDAN:  Yes.

ME:  ...To work at a gay bar?

AIDAN:  Yes.

ME:  I just know I'm going to hate this.

AIDAN:  You're going to love it.

ME:  How did your first night go?

AIDAN:  It was a Saturday. I got thrown right in the deep end, but it was an easy place to work, because everybody orders the same three drinks. The guy I was working with--We did not get along.

ME:  Was he straight or pretending like you?

AIDAN:  He was pretending.

ME:  Was anyone there actually straight?

AIDAN:  The guy who worked on Monday's was, I think, but that might have been it.

ME:  So was this like a poorly kept secret that all the bartenders said they were straight, but none of them really were?

AIDAN:  It depended on who you were.  When I first got there, nobody was sure whether I was or not.

ME:  How do you keep it a secret when people can find you on social media?

AIDAN:  Nobody could find me. I didn't have Facebook and I don't use my real name on Instagram?

ME:  What about the other guys?

AIDAN:  Most of them, even if you found their profile, what are you looking at? Photos of them at work at a gay bar. So yeah, there are pictures of them with gay men, but--Oh, we weren't allowed to add customers on social media though.

ME:  Who checks up on all this?

AIDAN:  Brian would look.

ME:  Can he do that?

AIDAN:  People can fire you for all kinds of s*** and say it's for something else, and when you're in the service industry, that's even more common.

ME:  He really didn't want you sleeping with the customers, huh?

AIDAN:  You know, I don't fault him for that? Because I think--There were problems we didn't have at my last bar that I know other bars my friends worked at had, because of the, um--

ME:  Fraternization?

AIDAN:  Yeah. It just gets messy. But I don't think that was Brian's reason for it.

ME:  What was Brian's reason?

AIDAN:  His thing--and you have to learn all this from talking to different people, because he won't tell you, but you keep your mouth shut, and you learn pretty quick what's going on. He thinks that, like, by having all these guys saying they're straight work there, it's like you're forbidden fruit, you know? The customers are coming in because--I didn't want to say this and sound like a jerk, but he only ever hired hot guys as well.

ME:  So hot and straight?

AIDAN:  Yeah.

ME:  So you're eye candy, basically?

AIDAN:  Yeah, and I think, the idea was, if the eye candy sleeps with the customers, the customers are going to get bored, and go find new eye candy at another bar.

ME:  Did anyone ever get fired for sleeping with a customer?

AIDAN:  The guy I was telling you about that I didn't get along with--He got fired for showing up late to a shift, but that wasn't why he got fired.

ME:  It was because he slept with a customer?

AIDAN:  He slept with a customer and then didn't call the guy back, and the guy got pissed, and told all his friends to stop coming to the Bar.

ME:  And they did?

AIDAN:  They did, yeah.

ME:  See, that's so tricky, because--I could argue both points. I could argue that it's his business who he sleeps with, but also, you can't argue that it didn't cost the Bar business.

AIDAN:  It's like I said, man, you can understand the logic behind it, but it's hard to enforce, and it is an invasion of your privacy.

ME:  But you didn't mind the rule?

AIDAN:  No, because I don't s*** where I eat in general.

ME:  Was it hard having to pretend you were straight in front of customers?

AIDAN:  See, I never felt like I had to pretend, because I don't talk about my personal life with customers.

ME:  They must ask?

AIDAN:  They ask and I change the subject or I ask about them. People want to talk about themselves. If somebody asks about you and you go 'Never mind about me, let's talk about you' they'll take you up on it most of the time.

ME:  Did people hit on you?

AIDAN:  All the time.

ME:  How did you deal with that?

AIDAN:  You change the subject. You laugh it off. Nobody ever did what I felt was crossing a line with touching me or anything. For the most part, I had good customers. I liked the people I met working there.

ME:  What made you leave?

AIDAN:  Brian.

ME:  Was he a bad boss?

AIDAN:  He asked me to do things that I wasn't comfortable with, and it got to the point where I just said 'I'm out.'

ME:  What kind of things?

AIDAN:  He wanted me and other bartenders to work shirtless on Wednesday's.

ME:  Why Wednesday's?

AIDAN:  That night was slow, and he thought we could pick things up by advertising that all the bartenders were going to go shirtless.

ME:  And what did you say?

AIDAN:  I said, respectfully, I didn't sign up to work at a strip club.

ME:  How did he take it?

AIDAN:  He goes 'You post photos of yourself at the gym with no shirt on.' Yeah, that's me at the gym and me on Instagram. That's not me at work. I don't want to work with my shirt off.

ME:  But that must have been part of the eye candy equation?

AIDAN:  Yeah, I'm not dumb, I know one of the reasons I got hired is because of how I look, but you, as my boss, can't admit that, because you're not supposed to hire people for that reason, so you can't ask me to walk around like that if I don't want to. I'm there to make drinks, that's it.

ME:  Separate from that, you kind of hinted at you not necessarily engaging with customers in a flirtatious way?

AIDAN:  Yeah.

ME:  Did that ever hurt you financially?

AIDAN:  You mean with tips?

ME:  Yes.

AIDAN:  It might have. I felt like I got tipped well. I think if everyone you work with is okay with flirting and you're not, then you become the mysterious, strong, silent type, and people can go for that the same way they can go for somebody who flirts and talks about their personal life all the time. I'm confident in my skills enough where if we were at a real bar, I could say 'I make the best drinks here and that's why I'm going to be your favorite bartender' but when everybody is ordering the same three things it becomes about how people are pouring.

ME:  Did certain bartenders overpour?

AIDAN:  Yes, and everybody knew who they were, and their nights were packed, and I would hear from the owner 'Why isn't this night doing better than that night?'  Because your bartenders on that night are ripping you off, dude--but I didn't say that.

ME:  It was bad enough where you felt like it was ripping off the Bar?

AIDAN:  Yes. But it did get people in the door on those nights.

ME:  Was the shirtless request the breaking point for you?

AIDAN:  No. He dropped that right away. It was a combination of things.

ME:  What were you other issues?

AIDAN:  For one thing, he was always having people come behind the bar on nights I was working to do these special events.

ME:  Like what?

AIDAN:  What it came down to was, if you had enough friends here, he'd have you work the bar one night, and you had to go on Instagram and Snapchat and tell people to come in that night and that would help drive up business. My problem with it was--That's okay once in awhile for charity or something like that--but this was all the time, and you had people who are not tip certified, not trained, just hopping behind the bar with me, and it's making my job harder.

ME:  You know, I notice bars doing that a lot, and it always seems strange to me that you can just have somebody hop on for a night without any training.

AIDAN:  You could never do it at a place that had a more, um, a bigger drink selection? Yes, anybody can make most of the drinks I had to make, but a bar is not a place where you should be letting random people hop in and work for you for a night. That's why I had people--because they're not employees, they're just there for the night--I had people tending bar with no shirt, only in their underwear, drinking with the customers, dancing on the bar like it's f***ing Coyote Ugly. Just--like I said, I didn't sign up for any of that, and it makes the place look like a f***ing joke. I don't want to work somewhere that's a joke. If that's what your bar is, I wouldn't have applied. But it was whatever Brian thought would work that night. If we're a bar where people dance on the bar, that's fine. I'm cool with that. I'm not going to work at a place like that, because I can't dance for s***, but we can't, like, try that out on a Monday by sending out an email Monday afternoon asking us all to watch this dance online and learn it so we can do it for the customers that night. Get the f*** out of here.

ME:  Did favoritism come into play at all?

AIDAN:  Yeah, but I won't complain about that, because that's everywhere. My thing--I think the favoritism was only the worst when it came to the drag queens.

ME:  What do you mean?

AIDAN:  Our big slot was Thursday. That was the big night for drag shows. We did them--or they did them, I don't know what they do now, but they did them Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Three in a row, but Fridays were the night nobody wanted to work--

ME:  Why not?

AIDAN:  Nobody wanted to come in. I don't know why. That used to drive Brian crazy. But Thursdays were the biggest, then Saturday, then Friday, so all the queens wanted to work on Thursdays. We were packed on Thursdays.

ME:  So how did the favoritism come into play?

AIDAN:  If Brian liked you, he would hang out with you outside of the bar, and if you hung out with him outside of the bar, you'd get a good slot on Thursday. If you didn't, you didn't.

ME:  So he could fraternize with the other workers, but you couldn't?

AIDAN:  We could fraternize with each other. I didn't, but we could have. It was just the customers that--But!  I will say that one thing would be--Every so often, we would have one of our regulars come in and they'd go 'I want to try doing drag and I want to do it on Thursday.' Now, Friday nobody's there, you could put anybody up onstage, nobody wanted to work it anyway. But these guys, they wanted to do drag for the first time, in front of a big crowd, show off, and then either keep doing it on Thursdays or never do it again. And I have all these other queens complaining to me, because they're working Friday's every week hoping to move up, and somebody gets to cut the line.

ME:  Why would Brian let them cut the line?

AIDAN:  Because he thought somebody was funny. Chet was the worst with that.

ME:  Chet from The Guest List?

AIDAN:  Yeah.

ME:  What happened with him?

AIDAN:  He would come in every night, act like an idiot--

ME:  He had that altercation with Scott?

AIDAN:  Yeah. He had altercations with a lot of people. I asked Brian if we could ban him and he said 'No.'

ME:  Why?

AIDAN:  Because he hangs out with Chet--socially. They're friends. I mean, Chet's there every night. Then he wanted to do drag one night, and Brian said 'Yeah, he's funny. Have him go on tomorrow night.' He told this to the queen we have who organizes the shows on Thursday. The two of us both hate Chet. We said to Brian, 'Brian, there are all these f***ing talented queens who have never performed on Thursday, why are we letting Chet perform on Thursday?' 'Because I said he's performing Thursday and I'm the boss. People are going to love it. He's so funny. People love Chet.'

ME:  Do people love him?

AIDAN:  Drunks love him. Other drunks. Because he's a drunk. Sorry, but he is. Drunk people find other drunk people funny.

ME:  How was his performance?

AIDAN:  It sucked. You can't decide to do drag on a Tuesday and be a drag queen by Thursday. He even had some help, but he was up there drunk, which the other queens aren't allowed to drink before they perform, but Chet got to do whatever he wanted.

ME:  Do you think any of the problems there affected the customer's experience?

AIDAN:  Yes. I know it did. Depending on the night you went in, you could have a great time or you could have a bad f***ing night. If you come in, and there's some twenty-two year-old kid behind the bar who's working because he said he would bring in all his friends and you have Chet acting like a f***ing idiot picking fights with people, you're going to have a bad night, and there's nothing I can do about that.

ME:  And it didn't concern Brian?

AIDAN:  No, because it's still the bar that everybody goes to, because it's one of the ones that's been around the longest. It's also the biggest, which I think people like. We have the biggest dance floor in the city, if you want to dance. We're the only drag show on Thursdays, which is why the Thursday show is so big. People like routine. Even if it sucks, they're going to stick to their routine. I think if we were straight and we had, you know, every bar in the city to choose from, you couldn't get away with a lot of this s***.

ME:  But you have a decent number of gay bars there.

AIDAN:  And the way gay people here usually do it is they bar hop. So if you want to hit three or four in a night, we're going to be one of the ones you go to. Now, could we make more money if we fixed some s***?  Yes. But the customers are also part of the problem.

ME:  How so?

AIDAN:  Because as much as I talk s*** about Brian, when he does some of this s***, it's because it works. If I'm at a bar, and there's a kid with no shirt on behind the bar who looks like he's twelve, and he's trying to make me a drink, I'm out of there, but people like that. So it's like--How can you fault Brian if it works? He's a business owner. He's going to try to make a buck.

ME:  But, you know, I've been saying with theater that you cultivate your audience. So if you let your audience get away with certain things or you train them to expect certain things, that's what you're going to get and you're going to drive away a better audience or customer base.

AIDAN:  That's right.

ME:  With Scott, do you know if he was banned from the bar because Brian is on the Guest List?

AIDAN:  I don't know who is on the Guest List and who isn't, but I know, with Scott, it was--If we let him keep coming here and we let Chet keep coming here, we're going to have a problem, and Chet was never going to be banned, so there you go.

ME:  Did you think that was fair?

AIDAN:  No.

ME:  When you finally quit, what brought that on?

AIDAN:  A combination of things, like I said.

ME:  But what was the reason on the day?

AIDAN:  I had gotten an email telling me there was a problem with my customer service skills or something like that.

ME:  Do you know why you got that?

AIDAN:  Yeah, because a big group of guys came in, from out of town, and Brian was talking with them, trying to look like a bigshot, and one of them asked me a question I didn't like, and I ignored him. I did get him his drink, but other than that, I wouldn't talk to him.

ME:  What was the question?

AIDAN:  It was something about what I like doing in bed.

ME:  Okay.

AIDAN:  And I guess he complained to Brian that Brian's bartenders aren't friendly. I was like 'Brian, I have worked for you for two years now, and you are never going to see that guy again, and if that were certain people, you wouldn't even care that I shot him down, but you were upset because he had a f***ing Armani suit on, and that's why you wanted me to kiss his ass.'  That was the email I sent back, and then I was done. I didn't go in that night.

ME:  Did he officially fire you?

AIDAN:  No, but he didn't have to.

ME:  So he was impressed by people with money?

AIDAN:  Very.

ME:  Where are you working now?

AIDAN:  I'm working at a great bar for a great boss. I'm very happy.

ME:  Still want to open your own place?

AIDAN:  Yeah, dude. It's going to happen.

ME:  I hope so.

AIDAN:  You going to come work for me when I open it?

ME:  I would be a terrible bartender.

AIDAN:  You can keep your shirt on if you want.

ME:  Well, that's a given.

AIDAN:  I think people would love you. You have that hot sarcastic thing going on.

ME:  So you like guys with Velma from Scooby Doo energy but not Anderson Cooper?

AIDAN:  Hey, you like what you like.

ME:  Well, when you open your bar, come back and talk to me about it. I'm glad you're doing well.

AIDAN:  Thanks, Kevin.

ME:  Now go shower.

AIDAN:  (Laughs.)  Dude, I smell so bad.

ME:  I think it's coming through the screen.

AIDAN:  You're welcome.

Aidan is now working at two different bars in the Community, but has not been back to The Bar or had any communication with Brian.

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